RICHARD C. RAMER Special List 161 MEDICINE

100
richard c. ramer
Controversial Medical Practicioner
146. MONRAVÁ E ROCA, António de. Academicas oraçoens phisicoanatomico-medico-cirurgicas,
em que practicam os mais eruditos discipulos da
nova Academia das Quatro Sciencias, para a comverçam do errado lastimoso
povo apolino. Antwerp (i.e., Lisbon?): Officina Plantiniana, 1732. 4°,
contemporary speckled sheep (some wear, especially to one corner), spine
gilt with floral tooling and fillets in five compartments, crimson leather
lettering piece richly gilt with floral tooling and gilt letter, textblock edges
sprinkled red. Woodcut initials. Woodcut and typographical headpieces.
Large woodcut tailpieces. Very small wormtrail in upper outer corner of
first three leaves; another minor trail in lower margin of last two leaves;
tiny pinpoint wormhole in lower margin of final ten leaves; none of these
ever affecting any text. Some leaves lightly browned; a few more heavily
so. Overall a very good copy. Contemporary ink ownership inscription of
a Franciscan library in upper margin of title-page. Another contemporary
ink signature on verso of plate. Engraved bookplate of Freitas Simões.
Frontis, (13 ll.), 320 pp. [pp. 57-64 misnumbered 87-94], (16 ll.).
$2,800.00
FIRST EDITION. Monravá e Roca was a colorful and controversial figure of
eighteenth-century medicine. Born in Pons (Catalonia), he studied in Barcelona, Valencia
and Lérida, where he received his degree. After working in Spain for ten years he travelled
to Portugal and accepted the chair in anatomy at the Hospital de Todos os Santos, Lisbon.
There his merits as well as his defects proved so great that no one could regard him with
indifference: some called him a charlatan, a few a scatter-brained genius. In 1732, just
before this work appeared, Monravá e Roca lost his position to Bernardo Santucci. He
maintained a surgical practice in Lisbon and enjoyed considerable fame in that field.
Monravá e Roca also established a school of his own, the Academy of the Four
Sciences, at which he taught anatomy, surgery, medicine and natural sciences. Ferreira
de Mira states that it was founded in 1739 and was closed by government order two
months later. On the title page of this 1732 work, however, Monravá e Roca calls himself
“Presidente Fundador da nova Academia das Quatro Sciencias,” and Innocêncio comments
that the school continued to draw students until its founder died in 1753.
The Academicas oraçoens seem to be essays by students of Monravá e Roca; the eighth
oração, for example, is entitled “Phisiologico-medica oraçam VIII sobre tres quimeras dos
medicos, que dice Miguel Gonzalves Gliz, discipulo Academico da Nova Academia,
Phisico-Anatomico-Medico-Chyrurgia do Hospital Real de Todos os Santos de Lisboa
Occidental, no Introito de hum acto de Conclusoens, que defendeo” (p. 214).
The frontispiece (unsigned) depicts an operating room during a surgical
procedure, within an allegorical border representing the four disciplines of Monravá
e Roca’s Academy.
The first leaf of the final section of 16 unnumbered leaves begins with two sonnets
addressed to Monravá e Roca by his students Manoel dos Santos Ferreyra and Paulo
Teyxeyra. The fifteen leaves that follow contain an index.
Provenance: Fernando de Freitas Simões (1896–1972), distinguished Portuguese
physician and important book collector. His library was dispersed through sales by
Christie’s London (1974?) and Arnaldo Henriques de Oliveira of Lisbon (1976), through
private sales by the sons of his first wife, and by his second wife.
j Lisbon, Faculdade de Medicina, Catálogo da collecção portuguesa I, 190. Palau
176721. Innocêncio VIII, 256: with incomplete collation; giving 3 reasons for including